Apples, Apples Everywhere!

I think Fall and school starting is often celebrated with apples in many a classroom across the country.  We may be different in almost every way as a home schooling family,  but we are no different in that this year we started out with apples!

This year all three kids are school age.  We have a 4th grader, a 3rd grader and one in Pre-K!  We loved our curriculum last year in the Weaver Unit Studies and plan to use them again this year but I wanted to take a slow start approach to school and a special field trip opportunity gave me just the opportunity.  At the end of last year a field trip group was formed on Facebook that we joined.  They are the ones we went with on the field trip to the Tamale Factory in the Spring.  Anyway, with as busy as the summer was we didn't get a chance to go on any others over the summer with that group.  I was thrilled though to hear they had a field trip scheduled to go to an apple orchard at the end of August.  Not only do we get to learn about what they do there, we get to actually pick apples off the trees!  How fun.  So, for this reason we started out our school year with apples as well.

Public schools around here started on August 24th but we decided to start a week earlier.  The first week of school was a huge success!  We read all about Johnny Appleseed, we painted apple pictures, we learned and labeled the parts of an apple, we made homemade applesauce, and we read lots of books about Apples.  We also did math, spelling and some writing with the older boys and studied the letter A and the color red with my youngest.  For our Bible lessons we talked about Adam and Eve in the garden and original sin and then we talked about the Fruits of the Spirit and made a Spirit Tree.  It was a great start of the school year and really set a good tone.  Tomorrow is the orchard field trip which we are all excited about as well.  I will post pictures afterwards but here are a few from the first week of school.

Praying that all students have a blessed and safe year and that they not only grow in knowledge of school subjects but that they grow in love of God and love for fellow people.  Happy start of school to everybody!

Summer Came and Went

People often ask what sort of summer break a home schooling family has.  The answer for each family will be as different as each family is different.  Some families school year around.  Others take the whole summer off similar to what a public school does.  Everybody else falls somewhere in the middle.

With this last year being our first year of home schooling it was a matter of learning and adapting as we went.  I fully intended to take the whole summer off like a public school but in the end we decided on doing what I refer to as modified school during the summer.  We did this for two reasons.  The first reason is that being from a family with a lot of educators I have heard often how much information students tend to loose over the summer and how teachers have to play catch up and review each fall when school starts again.  They have no choice but to have to do that in the schools who close for the summer but with us having a choice to avoid that it saves a lot of time.  Also, there were some things we didn't get finished during the school year and we needed to finish up over the summer.  While I felt we covered a lot of material and we did well for our first year trying it, there were areas we fell behind that needed to be finished for me to feel comfortable passing the kids on to the next grade.  Luckily we had the summer to accomplish this.

For us our modified school during the summer consisted of doing three summer reading programs with the kids and of doing math and spelling two to three days a week.  It actually worked out great and the kids have been able to fall back into school this Fall more easily and we still had plenty of time for fun during the summer.

There is no way I can go into detail on all the fun things we did this summer because I would be here posting all night but the highlights of the summer included visiting both sets of the kids' grandparents, a pool party for the end of religion classes at church, a hike with the Cubscouts, lots of activities at the library such as game days, zumba classes, and cookie contests, Landon's First Communion and party afterwards, tons of soccer games, a trip to the Science Spectrum for their Critter Fest where we saw all sorts of animals including a reptile show and a tiger show, a trip to Colorado that included miniature golf, go-cats, bumper cars, Tiny Town with a train ride, lots of swimming, Elich's Amusement Park, the Minions Movie, Dart Warz(Nerf Gun Wars), and tons of time with cousins, and a trip to Dallas that included the Dallas Zoo and Six Flags Over Texas and a friend's birthday party that included bowling, laser tag and video games.  We had so much fun!

I have seen my kids blossom in the past year more then I could have imagined.  Looking back at this time last year my oldest was sad and somewhat broken from all the bullying, my middle son was worried about not returning to public school and not sure what home schooling would really mean and my youngest was just along for the ride.  Watching how much they have grown in the past year and the true joy they have with life and the excitement they have now is astonishing.  I now have a super confident son in my oldest who really has his feet on the ground with his faith, knew massive amounts of information and really took his First Communion seriously, and is now an altar server at church.  My middle son is thriving in the home school environment and many of the gaps he came in with in his education from the public schools have been filled and he actually really enjoys lessons at times with our schooling.  My youngest has really developed a personality of his own and is excited to try new things daily.  We have been blessed the last year in ways we couldn't even imagine with this choice to home school and I am so thankful God led us to this decision.  I am looking forward to this school year more then ever!

There are too many pictures to even begin knowing that to post so I will leave you with just one as this was by far the most important event that happened all summer.   Congratulations on your First Communion Landon!  We are so proud of you.

Then there was May

You would think I would be able to at least manage to post once a month but alas, here we are again where I missed a whole month.  It was a jam packed month to say the least!  I know the month of May is traditionally very busy for most people with school ending.  I thought that with us home schooling it would make it a little more laid back but that was not to be the case!  It was a lot of fun though and well worth it.

After studying famine, the water cycle, water life, and then plants it only made sense that our next unit was on animals.  This was our last unit of this school year and it was a great one to end the year on as it was of course fun and something the kids are very interested in.  We of course talked about the benefits of animals to man, the benefits of man to animals, and how animals help each other and interact.  We studied mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds.  My kids are blessed that they actually have a lot of exposure to animals on a daily basis so they already had a very good base for the studies.  We have horses, dogs and cats currently but have also had rabbits and chinchillas in the past.  We have family members who have had other pets as well.  Living out on the country in West Texas we also see plenty of wild critters including snakes, lizards, prairie dogs, rabbits, gophers, owls and all sorts of birds.  Coming from Colorado they are already very used to seeing deer, elk, skunks, squirrels, chipmunks, and even a mountain lion or two.  We also have a lot of farm and ranch friends so cattle, pigs, donkeys, chickens, goats, as well as many others are part of the kids' lives often.  They loved learning more about these animals we have seen as well as many others that we have yet to see in person.  We had fun looking up all sorts of information about animals in books and doing a lot of comparison.

We wanted to celebrate completing our first year of home schooling.  Other schools often have large end of the year parties and we wanted to as well so together with the help of a few other local moms, we planned an end of the year party for a bunch of area home schooling kids.  We had it at a large local park and we rented the party house they have there.  Everybody brought their own lunches but we all brought snacks to share.  We also had the playground as well as a lot of toys and bikes people brought.  To round it out we brought a pinata which was fun!  I only got a few pictures but I don't want to share them with other peoples' kids in them.  It was really a fun time though!

At the end of the month we also went on a group field trip with the group out of Lubbock.  We toured a tamale factory in Lubbock and it was so neat!  We were able to learn how they made the tamales from start to finish.  The kids were really interested.  At the end of the tour they gave us some free samples and because of how careful they are in their factory with allergens, Daniel was even able to have some!  Then it was so cool because we went to a local grocery store and were able to buy the same brand right off the shelf so the kids could see it really from start to finish.  It was a great time and the tamales were pretty good as well.

When you add soccer starting, a trip to see Grandma who had back surgery, more gardening and end of the year Cub Scout events we kept busy.  This is going to have to be a post with no pictures though as they are all saved in another device.  I am happy to say though that we survived the first year home schooling and both boys passed to the next grade!